Over the past year, when it finally became clear that the protest was over and it would take years for the change demanded by those young people to come, more and more of them are choosing to leave.

It began with us. It’s hard to remember the day, after two years of demonstrations, dozens of spin-off protests, millions of words, hundreds of arrests and one Yair Lapid. But Israel’s protest movement began, first of all, as a protest by desperate young people. On the face of it, they were protesting against things that bothered young people in Tel Aviv – high rents, for example...

Just down the coast from Tel Avv in Gaza, young people do not have the
luxury of the choice of staying or leaving. Severe restrictions on
travel make it impossible for them to "live anywhere" even if
they have the credentials and the languages. They are stuck between
Hamas and Israel, and protest is too dangerous to risk. Such a waste for
Palestinian and Israeli youth - where are the leaders who can see the
real needs of their citizens ?

The grass is always greener in the neighbor's yard. Americans are
weathering a depression (or a "Great Recession") where in some
regions of the US unemployment is in the double digits. We lost our
home (along with millions of other Americans) in the great economic
meltdown, the bank foreclosed on us and the house's value four years
later is still $200,000 less than the price we paid 12 years ago.
Detroit just declared bankruptcy! And Europe? Spain with 25%
unemployment, Ireland, Italy, Greece, France all facing extreme economic
situations, austerity, unemployment. I really don't understand this
younger generation of Israelis. They have become too much like the
young generation of Westerners: all me, all mine, give it to me now or
I'm going to leave in a petulant huff!

i didn't say it isn't easier, it just isn't all peaches and cream, to
use an Americanism. When we made aliyah several years ago, I knew quite
a few Israelis who had had enough of the "American dream" and
decided to come home, warts and all.

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